


The Voice that Cries it's All in Vain

by Silberias



Series: Kingdom Come [2]
Category: The Godfather (1972 1974 1990)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-06 01:37:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15875823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silberias/pseuds/Silberias
Summary: "She was a lightning strike. There was no hope of going home at the time I met her and she was this gift from God for that purgatory I was in. We grew together as well as could be expected I suppose. I thought she would be safe, going by her father's name."Michael has just buried his wife and the dirt has hardly settled before he is proposing to Kay, the one who got away.





	The Voice that Cries it's All in Vain

> Well I walked in the pouring rain  
>  And I heard a voice that cries "It's all in vain"  
>  The voice of doom was shining in my room  
>  I just need one day somewhere far away  
>  Lord, I just need one day
> 
> \- Kingdom Come, by Tom Verlaine (popularized by David Bowie's cover on 1980 album Scary Monsters {and Super Creeps})

* * *

 

"What was she like?" _Why did you stay away, why did you not wait for me, I waited for you_ \--Kay did not say any of these things. It was shrewish and bitter to say them, to even think them, about a dead woman and her widowed husband.

Michael's face was pale and haggard and so like the last time Kay had seen him. It had been eight years since his father was shot, since Michael had had to go away for the business with the police captain and the gangster. _He's just lost his wife_ , she reminded herself, swallowing some wine down. His mother was cooking quietly, her movements practiced and careful, just visible in the kitchen from the small breakfast nook where Kay and Michael sat. Was she careful because she too was grieving the death of her daughter-in-law? Or had that woman's frenetic pace been an affectionately tolerated annoyance? The questions stuck in Kay's throat like burning coals.

"She was a lightning strike. There was no hope of going home at the time I met her and she was this gift from God for that purgatory I was in. We grew together as well as could be expected I suppose. I thought she would be safe, going by her father's name."

There was a long pause then and Michael raised a shaking hand to wipe at his eyes.

"They asked her name and the grocer says she answered, just as we'd always agreed on. Polly Vitelli, like she was bulletproof without my name putting a target on her back. And then one of the men raised up a pistol and shot her right between the eyes. And just like that," he trailed off, making an impotent gesture with two of his fingers.

Those hot coals were cooling to ice. Michael's face was shadowed and dead--and Kay knew somehow that he'd arranged his daughter to be her student. He had missed her. If his wife had never died he would have carried his attachment, his...affection to the grave. She felt it--and she felt also she stood on a precipice. Michael let the seconds slide by, staring at her in that quiet way that had had her swooning in college. Now though the smoldering good looks of his twenties had burned away leaving a frosty edge to him. Kay wondered what he saw in her--what nearly ten years had worn away, what stains had been left. She hated he was going to make her come out and say it. Coward.

"You want a mother for your children and a wife for yourself."

"I need a wife," he agreed after the beat of a moment. "I need _you_ , Kay," he continued, reaching across the distance between them to take her hand, "Kay, there is no better time than now. Now my business is all in the open for you to see, you can go into this with your eyes open. Wide open. Not like Polly. You'll appreciate the risks...believe the dangers."

God he had dark eyes, set back deep in his head and glittering like garnets, but Jesus he wasn't frosty he was ice cold: Marianna's mother was hardly buried and here he was almost on bended knee proposing to another woman. Almost a decade ago she had truly believed that Michael was warm, that he was sweet and honorable, and that everything was as he said at his sister's wedding: that's my family Kay, that's not me. Ten years could change a lot, though, a hell of a lot.

"Let me think about it," she said, very gently taking her hand from him and standing up. Before she stepped away she took a liberty and threaded her fingers through his hair. Soft, so soft, and he leaned into her touch like a cat. Kay pulled her hand away from him though and walked into the kitchen, asking where she could help Mrs. Corleone with the meal, quickly falling into working next to the other woman.

Mushrooms to chop, rosaries to say, and children's hair to braid. She wouldn't have to work, if she didn't want to. She would need to convert, that was obviously a given, but not much else.

Michael watched her for many minutes before standing and leaving for somewhere else in the house, murmuring that he had to make a few calls.

"Were you ever involved in Mr. Corleone's business?" Kay asked quietly as she kneaded bread dough while Mrs. Corleone swirled eggs into flour for pasta. Her companion never even twitched as she answered, her English accented heavily by both her New York upbringing and her Italian heritage.

"To me his business was our children, keeping them safe and fed. He was responsible for us, and he took that seriously. Michael is the same. I know you are asking about the other business, though, and that is not for a Sicilian mother to become involved in, or a Sicilian wife to pry about. But you are American. You should remind Michael of that."

"He is American too, though," Kay said, her voice soft because she knew it wasn't totally true. His children would be more American, but he was still close to his roots--he would always be Italian, too. Mrs. Corleone said nothing, to either refute or agree with Kay, only quickly rolled up her own dough and then put it in a bowl to rest.

The bread dough Kay had taken up was stiffening up under her hands but Kay kept at it--Mrs. Corleone had said to knead the dough until it gave almost nothing of a stretch and the skin outside as supple as silk. She took out some of her anger, always kept carefully banked away, and used it now. Michael was a product of his parents, and he lived a life where his wife had been shot dead in broad daylight. Where the week after that he was proposing marriage to the woman who got away.

Mrs. Corleone puttered around the kitchen, putting cannisters away and getting others out, while Kay kneaded the bread. The house was quiet around them, although there was the sound of children playing outside in the backyard and Michael talking on the phone somewhere here on the ground floor.

"I am sorry he did not wait for you, cara," Mrs. Corleone said now, sitting in the breakfast nook and sipping a small glass of lemonade. All of the sudden all of her hurt and anger boiled up for a horrible moment but Kay grit her teeth and kept breathing in and out as she worked the bread dough. For herself she was more than sorry. She was furious, she wanted revenge in the worst way, but there was now this opportunity for being with Michael.

Kay decided that her heart had been broken long enough being without him--it wouldn't change all that much if their marriage was some ruinous abortion of a relationsip. Revenge would get her nothing but more heartache. She could be with Michael, as dangerous and frightening as that might end up being, and so she decided to dive in with her eyes open.

**Author's Note:**

> I am about halfway through a chapter on my big, epic fic (FINALLY) and am also planning to move a lot of my works from FFnet to this platform (AGAIN: Finally). So if you start getting spammed with updates that is why!


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